Chapter Eight
Wolf stood. His demeanor seemed to instantly change as his gaze swept over her bare skin. “Your food is getting cold.” He moved to a trunk and retrieved a large towel, then returned, holding it out before the half barrel. “Come out of there before you pickle, boy.”
Before Selina could snap a reply, she caught sight of his lopsided grin. Her instincts shouted that she must be a wanton for not covering her nakedness beneath his scrutiny, but she feared one movement would draw more attention to herself. “I can dry myself.”
“Stop being a martyr. I won’t look, if that’s what’s bothering you.” He raised the towel over his face.
“You’ve already looked,” she reminded him, feeling heat rise to her face.
“Come on.” He shook the towel. “Get out of there before you catch your death.”
Half wanting to refuse, half longing to please him, Selina suppressed a shiver. “If you insist.” She grabbed the sides of the barrel and tried to slowly inch to her feet, the water dripping off her the only sound in the cabin. She could barely move as pins and needles prickled her legs. Unable to get them to cooperate, it took her several attempts to stand. And just as she felt her body give way, she found herself wrapped in the towel and quickly lifted off her feet.
Wolf carried her to the desk as if she weighed next to nothing.
“What are you doing?” she asked, suspicious.
“Keeping you from losing your balance. I told you you’d been in the tub too long.” He set her down in a chair, positioning her before the food tray he’d brought into the cabin. “You need to eat.”
“What about you?” Selina stared at the roasted chicken and bread. There was enough on the plate to feed two people. “Will you not share the meal with me?”
“I broke my fast earlier.” His clipped response puzzled her as he turned and began walking toward the bulkhead door.
She stopped him when he grabbed the latch and began turning it. “Where are you going?”
“I have a ship to command, remember?” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “I’ll return with something suitable for you to wear. Until then, stay inside my cabin where you’ll be safe.”
“Please,” she said as she stumbled toward him. He caught her in his arms. “When we arrive at my home, persuade Papa to fund a voyage back to Cadiz and take me with you. That’s all I ask. That’s all I want.”
Wolf drew her close, and she quivered in his arms. Thoughts of the love she’d never been given, of the violence she’d witnessed, and the man before her branding her with his touch gave a powerful tug on her spirit.
“Sometimes we don’t get what we want,” Wolf said, his gravelly voice tinged with misery. What had happened to cause him such sorrow?
“You don’t understand, Wolf,” she said.
“I think I do.” His impassioned eyes held her captive. “You were born for a reason, Selina. Never forget it.”
She felt her face pale. Wolf was trying to help, but he was only making her feel worse. “Born to ruin my father’s life?” That hadn’t been her choice.
“Or to save your brother’s?” he suggested. “Perhaps you were put in the right place at the right time.”
Was she? Her upbringing surely had toughened her spirit. If she hadn’t led a hard life, would she have been able to survive Cadiz or Saint-Malo? Would she be where she was now? Probably not, and confound her, Wolf knew it.
“But I have little influence over Papa, and that is why I need your help. Owen will inherit my father’s company, great wealth, and shares in Richard Trevithick’s new patents. The corsairs who kidnapped us asked for ten thousand pounds, more than many a lord earns in a year. Papa never would have paid an exorbitant sum like that for me. And he will not allow me to return to Cadiz.”
“Do you really believe that?” Wolf’s brows furrowed, knitting tightly together. “How can you be certain?”
“I daresay, the only reason our ransom was paid was because Papa feared he’d lose his heir. Even now, I suspect he’s paid men to hunt down the corsairs who sold us into slavery.”
“And yet you are here with me.” He cleared his throat. “You, not Owen, were the one who escaped.”
She met Wolf’s stare. “You do not believe our kidnapping is about me, do you?”
His eyes took on a darker quality she’d never seen before. “I find it hard to believe the events surrounding your kidnapping have nothing to do with you, Selina.”
Her heart clenched every time Wolf said her name. “Our kidnapping was part of a grand plan to seize Owen, knowing Papa would pay to get him back, nothing more.” She reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it deliberately. “I had no choice but to run, and my actions eat away at my soul. For this very reason, I must return to Cadiz. I have to save my brother, Wolf. I will never forgive myself if I don’t.”
“No,” he said, his voice stroking her like a caress. “You must return home where you will be safe.” He pushed her away, regarding her with more passion than a man ought to. “There are other ways to help your brother.”
“What ways?”
“Aren’t you the same woman,” he said, “who fought off a corsair with broken chair legs and burned down a tavern, threatening an entire city?”
He recounted her actions as if he admired them. His eyes twinkled, and her heart beat madly against her ribs. Where were the weapons that would help her fend off his charm?
“I am,” she said softly.
“Then I advise you to think of a way to help Owen that doesn’t involve risking your own life.”
Selina frowned. “That would be impossible.” She would gladly trade her life for her brother’s. He was the only one in the world who cared about her.
Wolf crossed his arms as if he was prepared to smack down her denial. “Do I need to remind you that you were lucky I was at the Wasp?”
“No.” Botheration, he was right. She wasn’t sure where she would be now if Wolf hadn’t been there. He’d bartered for her life and freed her from those miserable chains. He, Jolie, and his men had fought off Robillard’s horde. Their matchless skills were the reason she was able to plot a way to get Owen back at all. Now she just had to persuade Wolf and his crew to take her to Cadiz.
“I’m not sorry,” she told him.
“Neither am I,” he said. “And I never will be.”
She looked away and covered her mouth with trembling hands.
He growled low in his throat and stepped toward her. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“I’ve heard those words before,” she said, trembling. “It is Papa’s famous taunt.”
An unsettling quiet hovered between them. Wolf exuded a dangerous, heady maleness that confused and excited her at the same time.
“Never allow emotion to cloud your judgment.” Wolf rolled his shoulders and craned his neck back and forth. “You did what you had to do in order to stay alive, Selina. As have I and my crew.”
“What have you done?” She needed to know what haunted this virile man. She needed to understand how he lived with himself every day in spite of it.
“Men,” he admitted, “are forced to do things in times of war that upset the most stalwart stomach. In order to stay alive, to press forward when the odds are against you, a man cannot allow the ghosts in his past to haunt him.”
“How do you manage that?” she asked.
“The trick is to shut everything out before it drives you mad.”
Is that how Wolf dealt with his inability to remember his youth, his family? She shook her head, unsure if she would ever forget what she’d seen. “How long?”
“How long does it take?” His deep, flat voice hinted that the day might never come. “Until it gets easier.”
She nodded. ’Twas a small price to pay, she supposed. “I am glad Cuvier is dead.” She almost didn’t recognize her own voice. “I only regret that I did not have the chance to watch his life fade before my very eyes. At least now he can never hurt anyone else.”
Wolf managed a shrug. “Many more will take his place.”
“I know,” she said. Hadn’t she managed to escape them, too? Tears welled in her eyes. “And they have my brother.”
“Aye.” His eyes leveled on her. “For now.”
Alarm filled her breast. “I must find him.”
“But not yet.”
Selina’s heart pounded. The hammering grew louder and louder in her ears, as fear unlike any she’d ever known struck, sparking like flint inside her. She was overcome by a need to experience the refuge Wolf’s arms provided once more, to be reassured that she wasn’t alone. She wasn’t ready to trust anyone with her body yet, even Lord Gariland, who’d done everything he could do the past year to make her love him. And the irony was that she’d just met Wolf. But he wasn’t like any man she’d encountered, men who would have enjoyed discovering her secret and using it against her. He drew her to him, instead of repelling her.
“I’m glad you know the truth,” she said barely above a whisper.
“Selina.” He brushed the hair out of her face, his light touch creating rippling sensations across her skin. “That is all I’ve ever wanted.”
Unlike Lord Gariland, Wolf knew her secrets. He knew about Papa and Owen, her mother, and the fact that she could fight alongside men—assuming she wasn’t grossly outnumbered. She’d never shared so much of herself with anyone before, and she wasn’t quite sure how she’d found the strength to do so now. Perhaps it was because she knew Wolf could protect her. Hadn’t he proven it? He’d fought like a predatory animal against the odds. What she saw in his eyes, the qualities of a good man, lowered her defenses and made her feel . . . made her want a man like him in her life.
He was a ruggedly handsome, secretive fighter who’d sailed to a foreign land for purposes she had yet to glean. But what she had seen, his prowess with weapons, his ability to barter with thieves, and the confidence Jolie had in him convinced her Wolf was far more adept at staying alive than Lord Gariland, a man who recoiled at the opportunity to inspect his own investment, the pit mines.
She was now convinced that her betrothed would rather protect his impeccable garments than her. After having been kidnapped and forced to deal with dangerous men, she finally understood Owen’s grievances against the gentleman. He was not up to snuff. His gambling debts made him dangerous, and dangerous men were unpredictable.
“Will you escort me home once we make port?” She placed her hands on Wolf’s chest.
Their hearts beat in unison as he wrapped his fingers around hers. “I’m needed in London.”
She swallowed hard. “I need you, too.”
She glanced at his hands and inspected their veined width. Like Owen’s, his palms were large. Wolf had laborer’s hands roughened by violence, work, and hard living. Lord Gariland wore gloves at all times. Why, she couldn’t remember ever seeing the man’s gaudy-ringed fingers exposed.
Papa was not a successful businessman because others operated the mines for him, but because he’d climbed down into the mines himself and worked alongside his men, his body and clothes blackened from picking away at stone until a major source of tin or copper had been found. It was that same dogged determination that fueled her blood now. She would persuade Wolf to help her somehow, some way.
There was a good bit of Papa flowing through her veins—stubbornness, fortitude, and the presence of mind never to take no for an answer. She’d return to Trethewey House and discover if her father had rescued Owen. If he hadn’t done so, she would hire Wolf and his crew to sail her to Cadiz.
Selina asked more than Wolf could give. The lives of innocent people hung in the balance, and the sooner he answered Hartland’s request for help, joined Joanna and other members of the Legion gathering there, the sooner he could search for his own brother. His brother, Kearney, was the only one who could help him remember who he was and where he came from. That truth had been the only thing he’d ever wanted, the one thing he’d been searching for all his adult life.
Selina, however, tested his ambitions. The sight of her nakedness stirred a feral hunger inside him, making him desire to be the man she needed him to be. But women weren’t safe around him, and that gruesome truth cut him to the quick. He was a liability to anyone who chanced to love him.
He leaned down, his mouth a hairbreadth away from the plush lips that only moments ago were tinged slightly blue. Warmed by the towel, Selina’s face was full of color again, and he found himself unable to resist the promise of her sweet nectar, like an insect hazardously drawn to a faultless bloom. Bollocks. What was happening to him? He hadn’t felt this way since he’d been married to Jasumin.
“I could go to London with you,” she said, clasping his shirt, her eyes glazing.
“You left a man at the altar, albeit not by choice. He deserves to know you are alive.”
“Yes.” She sighed and squeezed her eyelids closed, leaning into him.
Did she love the man? Would the lucky bugger welcome her home, or would he regret her return as she believed he would?
Wolf had loved, lost, desired, and mourned his fair share of women. He’d lost Sinopa, his boatswain Thunder’s sister, and another one of his lovers to bloodthirsty enemies out for revenge. His first wife, Jasumin, had been killed shortly after they’d lost a baby during childbirth. It wasn’t wise for anyone to become emotionally attached to Wolf.
Yet something about this stormy-eyed waif practically drove him wild, luring him in like the tide to a rocky coast. Was it her heightened emotion, her desperation to accomplish her heart’s desire, or her insistence on coming to her brother’s rescue? He admired, even savored, the fight in her.
Selina sagged against his chest in defeat.
Wolf stiffened. Her nearness was a temptation too pleasant to dismiss, one that forced him to deny his own physical needs after being so long at sea. Abduction caused desperation in its victims. In truth, he was not sure if he’d be able to honor his promise to protect her and take her home, but Selina needed solace, and at that moment, she was finding it in his embrace. But it couldn’t be him for long. It could never be him. If he wasn’t careful, he knew she could get under his skin. Selina would be an addiction like his figuerados, one he’d find hard to quit.
He needed to consider her reputation, as well, not to mention her betrothed, a man Wolf imagined must have been beside himself with worry. Wouldn’t that be the case if their situations were reversed? Wolf would move heaven and hell to get back the woman he loved. He had done so once. But he had failed.
Bollocks. His senses spun. He actually envied Selina’s intended.
Selina pulled away from his chest and glanced up at him, her pulse increasing rapidly at the base of her neck. “Please,” she pleaded. “Help me.”
Yes, he could ease her troubled mind, just this once.
As if drawn to her by a silken thread, Wolf pressed his lips to hers, then covered her mouth with his. The contact, gentle at first, generated a heated thrill inside him, a dreamy indulgence he’d been denied for too long. He kissed her more soundly, drugged by her clean scent and the ambrosia of her sweet lips.
Selina clenched his shirt tightly, moaning into his mouth. She splayed her fingers across his chest, kneading the muscled sinew there, sliding her hands upward to his neck as he continued to coax her cares into a fleeting memory.
He drew her toward him, holding her tighter and closing the space between them. Her body shuddered as she molded it to his. Short curls wrapped around his fingers as he wove them through her hair. Intoxicated by her heat and the urgency that sped from her into him, he teased her with near-kisses until she moaned. With her impassioned whimpers encouraging him, Wolf gave in to his savage desire as he licked and then nipped at her lips.
She returned the favor, learning how to please him.
Wolf’s heart thudded in his chest. If he wasn’t careful, he’d lose what little control he had left. He needed to keep his wits. This experience wasn’t about him; it was about Selina and easing her fears.
He felt certain her lack of restraint was a trick to get him to agree to help her rescue Owen. She was determined to sail back to Cadiz and rescue her brother at any cost, and he’d best remember it.
Wolf tore his lips away from hers, regretting his decision instantly when her moan of disappointment met his ears.
“Wolf,” she said, pulling on his neck, tugging him toward her expectant mouth. “Don’t stop.”
“We cannot do this,” he said hoarsely. “I cannot do this.”
“I know.” Her breath was ragged and uneven. “I’m betrothed . . .”
“Yes.” She was. “And you are not dressed. I’d be a fool to take this any further.”
“I am not ashamed . . .” Her eyelids drooped seductively. “I’m bound to a man I do not love, Wolf, and I want you to kiss me again.”
Bloody hell, Selina didn’t know what she was asking. Or did she? “Do you know what comes after the kissing?”
“The bedding.” Her candid admission drove him wild. “You make me feel alive,” she continued. “That’s all I know. And I want to feel alive, Wolf. I want it as much as I want to bring my brother home.”
He’d been right, damn him. This was all about Selina’s brother. Talk of Owen Herding was like a dip in arctic water, immediately sapping him of his lust and insanity.
He grabbed her hands and lowered them from his neck. “When you dance with the devil, there is a price to pay.”
“Wolf, I—”
“Still need to eat.” He scooped her into his arms and carried her back to the chair, deftly depositing her there. Once settled with the towel wrapped securely around her, he leaned down and tapped the end of her nose with his finger. “Your food is getting cold.” Before she could stop him, he made a hasty retreat to the cabin door. “We should be in Portreath tomorrow. Do you ride?”
“Do I ride?” She raised her chin defiantly. “Can a ship sail without the tide?”
“No. Is that your way of saying you cannot ride?” After what Wolf had seen Selina do, he was quite certain she could handle a horse and just about anything else—except him. No woman could.
“Of course I can ride,” she said.
He rolled his shoulders and then opened the bulkhead door. Before stepping across the coaming and making his exit, he glanced back at her one last time. “I’ll see you on deck, boy.”